With 15.66 million digital songs sold\u00a0in the U.S.\u00a0<\/span>in the week ending Aug. 27, according to Nielsen Music, the industry saw its lowest weekly song volume in nearly eight years.<\/p>\n It’s<\/span>\u00a0the smallest weekly sum for song downloads since the week ending Dec. 9, 2007, when 15.64 million were sold.<\/p>\n Conversely — and unsurprisingly — as sales plummet,\u00a0streaming continues its ascent, with the same frame marking the highest week of total U.S.\u00a0<\/span>on-demand audio and video\u00a0streams: 6.6 billion.\u00a0<\/span>The streaming surge follows as consumers adapt to free and low-cost streaming services (like Spotify, YouTube and Apple Music) and shift away from the pay-to-own model.\u00a0<\/span>(More on streaming’s big gains in a moment.)<\/p>\n Digital Song Sales Slide:\u00a0<\/b><\/span>The top–<\/span>selling song of\u00a0the Aug. 27<\/span>\u00a0tracking week was R. City\u2019s \u201cLocked Away,\u201d featuring\u00a0Adam Levine<\/strong>, which sold 92,000. That\u2019s the smallest sum for the week\u2019s top–<\/span>selling download in almost nine years, since the frame ending Dec. 17, 2006,<\/span>\u00a0when\u00a0Beyonce<\/strong>\u2019s \u201cIrreplaceable\u201d shifted 88,000.\u00a0\u201cLocked Away\u201d also marks the first time\u00a0that\u00a0<\/span>the week\u2019s top seller fell below 100,000 downloads since the week ending Jan. 14, 2007, (when,\u00a0<\/span>again, \u201cIrreplaceable\u201d\u00a0was tops<\/span>, with 98,000).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Overall song sales for 2015 total 678.3 million — a decline of 10 percent compared to the same point a year ago (through the\u00a0frame ending\u00a0<\/span>Aug. 24, 2014). If song volume doesn\u2019t pick up before the end of the year, 2015 will become the third straight year that song sales have declined. In\u00a02014, song sales volume dropped by 12 percent<\/span>.<\/p>\n Streaming On the Rise:<\/b><\/span>\u00a0The week ending Aug. 27 was the largest week for combined on-demand audio and video streams ever, with 6.6 billion. The most-streamed song of that week was Silento’s “Watch Me,” with 22.3 million.<\/p>\n And, year-to-date, total on-demand streams stand at 191.4 billion — up\u00a0100<\/span>\u00a0percent compared to the same time frame a year ago (95.8<\/span>\u00a0billion through the week ending Aug. 24,\u00a0<\/span>2014<\/span>).<\/span><\/p>\n Album Sales Update:<\/b><\/span>\u00a0The digital song dip\u00a0(and streaming high)<\/span>\u00a0comes four weeks after weekly album sales volume fell to a new low: 3.71 million in the week ending July 30. A week later, another\u00a0woeful distinction<\/span>\u00a0was claimed: the top album of the week — the soundtrack to Disney Channel\u2019s\u00a0Descendants<\/i>\u00a0— sold just 42,000 copies. That\u2019s\u00a0the\u00a0lowest sales figure for a No. 1 album<\/span>\u00a0on the Billboard 200, or Top Album Sales, since Nielsen Music began powering the charts’ rankings in 1991.<\/span><\/p>\n